The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga) by Stan Hayes Read Free Book Online Page A

thinking how funny it’d be to have a couple of my New York friends in the backseat, holding a jug in a paper bag and driving through ‘niggertown’ on a Saturday night. They absolutely would not believe it.”
    “No doubt,” Jack said, smiling. “But as I recall, you never mentioned the possibility of going up to Harlem on a Saturday night.”
    She giggled again, something she rarely did. “You mean with you? Hell, the last time I saw you in New York you still weren’t old enough to drink. In a public place, that is. I never cared for that part of town, anyway.”
    “Me either, even though I think my artfully-altered Georgia Driver’s License would’ve stood up in Harlem as well as it did in Manhattan. Not that we went that many places; had that one great night in Birdland, though.”
    “John Coltrane. Yeah, that was great. What in the hell do you suppose your dad was thinking, letting you stay out late with me like that?”
    “Well, he damn sure didn’t think that you and I were lovers. He saw you, at least I think he saw you, as a sort of mentor to me.”
    “Ha!”
    “Well, darlin’, you were; he just didn’t know what the curriculum was.”
    “Damn! You know, I saw my share of head-in-the-clouds academic types at Johns Hopkins, but as brilliant as he may be- no offense, baby- seems like he’s more of a head-up-the-ass type.”
    “Can’t fool you, huh?”
    As they neared the center of the three-block area of black-occupied houses, at least half of which had never seen a coat of paint, a black man, somewhere between the ages of fifty and seventy, raised a hesitant hand in greeting, his voluminous, ragged overcoat falling open as he did. Jack answered the wave with a tap of the horn. “Who’s that?” Linda asked.
    “Dunno. Somebody mistaking me for Mose, most likely. Don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.”
    “Well, that guy looked like he might’ve seen a ghost or two. He seems to have had quite a range of acquaintances; Mose, I mean.”
    “Indeed he did; of course, he was the kinda guy that people wanted to know. All kinds of reasons.” The wagon topped the small rise at the park’s entrance; off to their right a foursome of golfers and their caddies, intent on finishing their round before dark, ignored them.
    “A tad nippy for golf, if you ask me,” she said.
    Jack shook his head. “That’s a very peculiar kind of insanity. Glad it never grabbed me. And speaking of insanity, get ready for a prime example.”
    “What’s that?” she asked as they rounded the ninety-degree left turn past the clubhouse.
    “Just up the way here a little bit.” As they passed an open dance pavilion on the left, its posts casting wan shadows in the fading light, he said, “See that building? He gestured toward a good-sized one-story brick structure, badly in need of a fresh coat of the flaking buff-colored paint that had once covered it. A driveway ran past a broad staircase that climbed up to a pair of doors set into glass brickwork.
    “Um-hmm. Looks like a bathhouse.”
    “Right the first time! Remember me telling y’all about a guy who tried to shoot up the hotel cafe getting killed by a runaway truck?”
    “Uh- yeah- had something to do with that horny little cook, didn’t it?”
    “Right again!” The wagon took them up a slight hill and through a hundred-and-eighty degree turn past one of the golf course’s greens. “Now- see that nice sloping meadow behind the bathhouse?”
    “Um-hmm.”
    “That used to be the City of Bisque’s swimming pool.”
    “Ooh, yeah. I remember now. Instead of integrating it, they filled it in and grassed it over.”
    “Yup. Behind a very thin smokescreen of a deteriorating facility; a sanitation hazard that the city fathers just couldn’t find the money to replace with a new pool.”
    “Damn! Where do the kids go to swim?”
    “Well, they have a choice of the Elks Club or the country club. Members and guests, that is.”
    “Which is to say, white